FAQ

What should I do if one of the binaries included with InterProScan doesn’t work on my system?

Please see the section Compiling binaries for instructions on how to compile the various binaries on your own system.

Where can I find the XSD of the XML output?

The XML Schema Definition (XSD) is linked under the Extensible Markup Language (XML) section of the InterProScan OutputFormats page.

Can I use different binary versions than listed?

InterProScan 5 is designed to run with the same binaries used by the supported member database analysis versions. This ensures that the output results returned are as the member database intended. This is why for example you will find multiple versions of HMMER (e.g. for the SMART and Pfam analyses) bundled with InterProScan and referenced in the interproscan.properties configuration file.

Swapping the binary versions is not recommended. InterProScan could fail (e.g. if the input/output of the binary has changed and is no longer recognised). Even if no errors are thrown, you would be running with an unexpected binary and we cannot guarantee the results would match what the analysis intended.

If you are having problems running the provided versions of certain binaries on your system, please follow these instructions.

Which cluster does InterProScan support?

In theory InterProScan is written flexible enough to run on any cluster platform and not only on LSF and SGE. But LSF and SGE are the only platforms we can test here at the EBI. We had feedback from users who run it successfully on a PBS cluster. For further info on how to configure your cluster version please follow the documentation.

Is there Galaxy has a wrapper for InterProScan?

Do you want to add InterProScan 5 to your Galaxy analysis pipeline? You can find the wrapper for InterProScan 5 on GitHub.

When using InterProScan 5 with Galaxy, the cluster integration is done via Galaxy, which means you cannot use InterProScan 5’s in-built CLUSTER mode.

Documentation and contact details

Galaxy Tool Shed link for InterProScan 5: http://toolshed.g2.bx.psu.edu/view/bgruening/interproscan5

Contact: Bjoern Gruening (bjoern.gruening@gmail.com)

Publication

Peter J.A. Cock, Björn A. Grüning, Konrad Paszkiewicz and Leighton Pritchard (2013). Galaxy tools and workflows for sequence analysis with applications in molecular plant pathology. PeerJ 1:e167 (http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.167)

I get Java errors on running InterProScan

If a simple test of InterProScan fails please check your installed version of Java is suitable, see installation requirements for more details. The latest version run with Java 11.

How to analyse a huge amount of protein sequences (>30000)?

The following guidance I would say is good practice, when you use InterProScan to annotate large sequence sets. To give you an example about InterProScan’s run time, inhouse we are able to annotate a complete Escherichia coli proteome (~3.000 protein sequences) on our farm (standalone mode) within ~1hour. Other sequence sets of 16,000 protein sequences have taken ~5 hours on an a machine with 8 cores and 8GB RAM.

If you want to annotate huge ammounts of protein sequences we would strongly recommend to chunk your input sequences into chunks for lets say 80,000 sequences. If you are analysing nucleic acid sequences, the chunk size should be even smaller. And then you would run individual InterProScan jobs for each chunk file. That way you make sure you get intermediate results and if lets say your InterProScan program crashes on half way you do not lose everything. see improving performance

Should I filter by e-value?

The e-values are specific to each individual InterPro member database and therefore cannot be compared directly, or a single threshold applied to them all. This is because some member databases use the e-values for post-processing (e.g. SMART, Panther), others just output it as part of their results but actually use other measures for filtering of results (e.g. Pfam and the Hmmer GA cut-off). Therefore as far as InterProScan is concerned, if a match is in the output then it is a match!

Why do I see “Pre-calculated match lookup service failed - analysis proceeding to run locally”?

This is a warning to say that the match lookup service you are trying to use could not be used, therefore InterProScan will calculate the results locally on your system instead. In this situation InterProScan will continue run, however this is likely to result in slower performance than normal.

This warning could occur because the lookup service your installation of InterProScan is configured to use is either: * Not (or no longer) compatible with your version of InterProScan. * Is not accessible through your internet, proxy or firewall system configuration. * Is temporarily down.

See more information about the lookup service to understand what is does and how to configure it.

How is InterProScan 5 different from InterProScan 4? How do I migrate?

InterProScan 4 is way way obsolete! But if you are still using InterProScan 4 then we recommend you send us a support request as soon as possible.

InterProScan 5 differs from InterProScan v4.x in the following ways:

  • New analysis type: Phobius for transmembrane and signal peptide prediction

  • New feature: ability to map InterPro results back to the original nucleotide sequences that were submitted

  • New feature: option to look up biological pathways that the protein is potentially involved in

  • New output formats: “IMPACT” XML format and GFF3.0

InterProScan 4.8 is no longer supported or updated. For more details on how to migrate to InterProScan 5 send us a support request.